EPHEMERAL -MINIATURE GARDEN-

EPHEMERAL -MINIATURE GARDEN- is an Otome based in the same world as EPHEMERAL -FANTASY ON DARK-, although it is not a sequel or related in any way. In Miniature Garden, you play as a mermaid who has been accused of killing her parents and as your punishment, you’re… well, you’re forced to be a maid to a merman in a special institute for them to live and survive. Mermen in EPHEMERAL are considered incredibly rare, since they often die shortly after birth, which is why this special place exists for them to live. The air is purified for them to survive within, and there is an odd doctor who is in charge of running the place. The above description may sound weird, if not confusing, and that is because the narrative here is not exactly a well-written story. Within minutes of starting you go from being with your parents, happy and loving, to suddenly they have been murdered. There is absolutely no explanation as you are suddenly taken by some police with the intent of going to jail. But instead you end up at this place for mermen. I’m not at all sure why, since you’re essentially accused of being a murderer and your “punishment” is to become a maid to a merman of your choice. I should explain before continuing - if you did not play Fantasy on Dark, the game works in a ranking of power for fantasy races. Something like a zombie is the lowest, while vampires are very high and mermaids sit at the top. Your “race” defines how important you are in society, with the lower you rank? The worse you are treated by every race above you. However, those “mermen of choice” are really not good options. I, personally, would rather serve my time than deal with them. All three are pretty littered with bad traits, with the worst being straight up misogyny. Rion, one of the three, immediately starts insulting the MC calling her “no use” to him, which the institute owner, Evan, has to tell him he cannot go telling women they are of “no use” to him. Hisui is the first I picked to romance. The MC states that she feels Hisui is “protective” and so it could be safe to care for him over the others. However she was extremely wrong, and he’s not much better than Rion once you get to know him. Due to the MC’s very sheltered life, since mermaids are considered royalty in this world, she has little to no experience in things like cooking and cleaning. Knowing this she is often ridiculed by him for her lack of knowledge and the fact she cannot instantly pick up the ability to cook well. I then got blasted with a very off-guard by Hisui saying, “I’m not in the habit of raising a hand against the opposite sex, but right now I’m very tempted.” pretty unprompted, in the scenario he asked why a cooking failure happened. She couldn’t work it out herself, and that was the response she got. I did not go deep into all of the routes because these characters are just not at all enjoyable for me, and I didn’t like the MC, who I would “immerse” myself as, being treated so lowly and belittled. Seeing romance develop between her and these men was also just weird, and felt very unnatural. Unfortunately, that is not the end of my complaints with Miniature Garden. I found very quickly that the volume scales barely work. You can either turn it all the way down so there is no audio, or, well, nothing. The rest of the scale barely affects the volume at all, not like it should. This is a direct mobile port, so the game’s resolution reflects that, which I am fine with personally. However there are a few lingering things that should have probably been adjusted to fit this version. The biggest one to me is where the mobile game would typically cut into chapters, the PC version does not and instead it just randomly fades to black and jumps back a few text lines. It serves to be a “recap” but it’s not at all necessary on a platform without a chapter system and should really be removed. There is also not a “text history” which is one of my biggest wants in visual novels. Maybe I want to check back on some recent information that relates to something else, or I accidentally double clicked and want to see what I’d accidentally missed. Instead Miniature Garden DOES have a way for you to go back in text, by pressing ctrl. It’s better than nothing, but it skips back text rapidly so you’re not going to just go back one or two lines - but instead several with little control. While not related to the game directly, the steam page itself is a bit of a red flag for EPHEMERAL. It clearly did not get a proofread before publishing since Rion, a male love interest, is constantly misgendered in his own description: He has a foul-mouthed and belligerent personality. She and the protagonist are similar in some ways. She is not good at studying, but she can do housework and cleaning as well as anyone. Finally, and the one thing I did not expect to enjoy is actually the best part of this visual novel! But it is the translation. Fantasy on Dark suffered an absolutely terrible translation. The English was incredibly poor, not at all proofread and just unintelligible at times. There were whole scenes I could barely understand with even the utmost effort. However, Miniature Garden appears to have learned from that and has a very good translation compared, clearly it has gone through proofreading and actually has a certain quality to it. There are some sentences that could do with a little modification - maybe they don’t flow super well or are just not quite as I would imagine someone writing or explaining something. But it really is a very good quality which I am sad Fantasy on Dark didn’t get. Unfortunately, I strongly recommend against Miniature Garden. Fantasy on Dark was promising, if it had a better English translation I think it could be somewhat enjoyable, but struggled with some horrible characters - but did include some good ones. From Miniature Garden, I was hoping there would be improvements all over the board, although I expected little since it was just a mobile port and not a new, fresh game. The translation quality was unfortunately the only real improvement while everything else felt like a loss in quality. From the nonsensical story to the horrible men you are meant to romance? I really couldn’t enjoy it and decided for my own sanity to not finish even one route, but even when a game is bad I try and finish at least one route so I can get a good idea and see if things improve later on. If you are a huge fan of Fantasy on Dark you may enjoy this one. But I feel the vast majority of Otome fans will not. We’re in a day where misogyny is very outdated, and characters riddled with it are usually villains that the writers want to be very hated. We’re also quite over the weak, dainty MCs and people are typically hunting for strong, confident women to take the place of in the story. A good way to explain the overall experience fo EPHEMERAL games might be that they’re quite outdated with their stories. But due to all of this, I cannot recommend this one at all. I may play a little more in the future, and if I find any improvement I will update this review. Key was provided by dramatic create to Otome Lovers for review purposes. [quote]Please follow our curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/4680120/]Otome Lovers[/url], if you'd like to see more reviews like this one! [/quote]

首先边打边记录键位： F1召唤主菜单，F3存档，F4读档，F7自动播放，F7两下快进 本作一共三个可攻略对象但是没有一个写得达到及格线 第一条线选的悠古最后实在没坚持到打完说一下打到中途的感想 比本篇来说剧本大概拉了不止一个台阶的续作，一些对人物塑造毫无帮助的台词和剧情，看似悬疑但实际全靠bgm烘托而不是靠剧本营造 最后的最后，你都放上PC端了为什么还是竖屏？为什么没有log回放？打折到十块左右我觉得为了集邮之类的理由可以低价购入。有时候游戏的逻辑性和恋爱感总该选一项吧至少别做的两者皆无还要我掏钱

"+" Визуально очень приятная игра. Красивые герои, хорошо прорисованные, меняются выражения лиц. Приятные цвета. С эстетической точки зрения очень хорошо. "-" Русский язык – обнять и плакать, включая перевод меню. Немецкий язык. Я учу немецкий и такие игры мне нужны для отрабатывания чтения и словарного запаса, так что тут мне судить сложно. Смысл фраз понимаю, хотя временами слова встречаются странные. Окно игры на моём ноутбуке невозможно развернуть на полный экран, при любом клике по меню или тексту судорожно сворачивается до маленького и отпрыгивает в левую сторону экрана. Неудобно. Пусть изначально это игра для смартфона, но можно было сделать просто черный фон по бокам – это уже было бы хорошо. В настройках есть 3 разрешения экрана – не помогает. Нет возможности прочитать лог игры. После скриншота изображение начинает глючить – показывается только часть изображения и текст начинает идти непрерывно на приличной скорости. Приходится перезагружать игру. Честно, я хотела бросить эту игру, но очень мало визуальных новелл с возможностью переключиться на немецкий язык, поэтому, как говорится – мышки плакали и кололись, но продолжали есть кактус. Upd. 3 часа игры и не было ни одной возможности выбора. Надоело.

Не надо. Даже со скидкой. Если интересно посмотри лучше видео

Finalmente pude jugarlo!!!, originalmente el juego estaba en la Play Store y me había quedado en la ruta de Rion; después quitaron los juegos y años después lo pusieron para PC, estoy feliz de poder terminar las rutas de Hisui y Yugu :3. Las rutas son cortas pero bien escritas, aunque debo decir que no usan español neutro, algunas palabras utilizaron modismos chilenos o argentinos, no recuerdo, pero se entendía lo que el personaje quería decir. Otra cosa a destacar es que no está optimizado para PC, ya que originalmente era para móvil, sin embargo espero que haya una actualización para se pueda jugar en pantalla completa ya que solo aparecía en modo vertical. Recomiendo el juego por la historia y la estética del juego, ya que el arte es hermoso, solo ten en cuenta que cuando abras el juego se abrirá como si fuera un juego para celular, de ahí en fuera no tengo queja. Espero que metan más otomes de Hunex, son muy buenos uwu.